The present invention relates to a scanner server apparatus and a scanner server system which store image data from a scanner for photoelectrically reading an original image and transfer the stored image data to a processing apparatus over a network.
In recent years, a plurality of computers are often connected over a network so as to facilitate a sharing of data and printer resources. As a function therefor, the functions of a print server through which a plurality of users share a single printer and a scanner server through which a plurality of users share a single scanner have come to be valued.
As described above, the scanner server is designed to provide access to a single scanner by a plurality of computers on a network. This makes it possible to obviate the need to provide a dedicated scanner for each computer and simplifies the system configuration.
Unlike the print server for inputting and storing image data transferred through a network and printing out at any desired time, the scanner server requires a real time characteristic such that when an original document to be read is set in the scanner, the original document image is read and the image is stored.
Therefore, while the reading and storing of the document image set in the scanner is being performed in accordance with a command from a particular computer, the scanner server cannot respond to a request from any other computer. Further, while a process requiring processing time, such as editing of an image, is being performed by an execution of the image storage function of the scanner server, requests from the other computers are placed in a waiting state until the process is terminated.
Examples of such processes include storing image data, obtained by prescanning an original document image, in a scanner server, transferring the stored image data to a computer over a network and displaying it thereon, and setting various processing conditions for the displayed image, after which the original document image is scanned again (the final scan) and image processing is performed on the image data obtained thereby.
During such processing, the scanner and the scanner server are exclusively used for that process for a long period of time beginning with the prescan and continuing until the main scan is terminated.